


Foreseeable

by propinquitine



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M, Pre-Slash, Spoilers for 4.20 - The Last Man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-08
Updated: 2008-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 09:48:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24967729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/propinquitine/pseuds/propinquitine
Summary: Hearing about it had been bad enough; he doesn't know that he'd want to see it, now, even if it is different. Will be different. Shall have been? God, he hates time travel.
Relationships: Rodney McKay/John Sheppard, alternate-timeline Jennifer Keller/Rodney McKay
Kudos: 15





	Foreseeable

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd. Feedback much appreciated!

After John had walked through the gate (from the gateroom, to the gateroom, and wasn't that just _weird_ ) and given Carter a quick rundown of the past twelve hours, two weeks, 48,000 and/or 700 years, give or take, he'd been bustled off to the infirmary for tests under the watchful gaze of several well-armed Marines. "It's not that we're not happy to have you back-- seriously, Colonel, thrilled-- it's just, we have to make sure it's really you," Rodney says, looking for all the world like he wants to reach out and grab John's shoulder, just shake him, as though that'd be diagnostic enough.  
  
"I know, Rodney. I helped write the security protocols." John notices that Rodney's careful to keep a Marine between the two of them the entire walk to the infirmary.  
  
 _That's a man who's used to being disappointed_ , John thinks, and then, _No, that didn't happen, none of it happened. They're not dead, Teyla_ \-- "Teyla. We have to go after her. I know where Michael has her, or where he'll take her; we have to get to her."  
  
"I know, I know, as soon as possible, before the baby, you said. And I'll get right to work looking at the data crystal you brought back, just as soon as I scan it and make sure it won't wipe out the database, or overload the power generators, or, or give us all hives."  
  
"Hives?" John smirks. God, he'd missed this. There are some things you just can't program.  
  
"I don't know! It's from the future, it could be damaged, it might be sabotage, who knows what kind of trouble the operating system will have with it? The point is, it needs to be scanned, for safety, before we can get to work."  
  
They've reached the infirmary by now. Sam's briefed Keller over the radio, and the doctor is hovering by the door with a team at the ready. John swears he can see the glint of a syringe in one of the nurse's hands. "So you're saying I should be a good little colonel and sit still for the doctor?"  
  
"So that we can go get Teyla, yes. And hey, I bet Keller'll give you another lollipop if you're good." Rodney flashes a small smile at her over John's shoulder, and John feels a pang of . . . something, he's not quite sure what. What do you call sympathy for someone who's lost something he doesn't even know he had? Will have. Had had? John's not good at talking about feelings in a linear timeline; there's no way he's got the vocabulary to deal with it when time travel's involved.  
  
"I'll cooperate. You just focus on getting that data." John turns to enter the infirmary, and feels a hand on his shoulder. Turning, he sees that the Marines have fallen back, away, and Rodney's given in, finally touching him.  
  
"Just don't . . . not be you." Rodney looks at him, blue eyes like the ocean around the city (it was still there, he'd checked, craning his neck to peer over balcony railings as he was led from the gateroom, it was _there_ ), peering out at him from a comparatively unlined face, and John realizes: he'd been gone for almost two weeks. Not as long as Teyla's been missing ( _Teyla_ ), but still. Gone.  
  
"I won't, buddy," John says, bringing his other hand up to squeeze Rodney's shoulder in turn. "I'm me-me, I promise."  
  
They smile at each other for a moment, subdued, remembering yet another time things had been pretty crappy before they'd gotten kind of okay. Rodney breaks first, dropping his gaze and giving John a little shove towards the infirmary. "Yes, well, I'll believe it when I see the scans, so get going." His hand lingers for a moment on John's shoulder, and John thinks, _yes, solid, real_.  
  
  
Keller has the Ancient scanner primed and ready for him, and he lies still as its green light makes pass after pass over his body. _Tell them_ , he thinks at it. _Tell them it's me_. He wonders if Carson thought the same instructions to the microscope slides that exposed the truth in his cells, and their too-short telomeres. _Nah_ , he thinks, _I bet they used computers for that_.  
  
They might want to check out that nurse with the syringe, too, because suddenly there are copies of her everywhere, pulling vial after vial of blood. The medical team has their own set of protocols for these situations, none of which apparently include feeding the patient.  
  
"Hey, can I get a sandwich over here?" John tosses the question toward the flurry of medical technicians, more to see if anyone will bother volleying it back than anything else.  
  
Keller appears at his shoulder with a bottle of apple juice and a powerbar. "This is the best I can do for you right now, but I'll send someone to the mess to get you something in a bit."  
  
"Hey, no trouble, I can just mosey on down there myself, let you all keep working," John says, swinging his legs off of the scanner bed where he'd been waiting, and pushing himself to his feet.  
  
Keller pushes him back down, shaking her head. "Nice try, Colonel. You're sitting there for the foreseeable future while we run these tests. Now, eat your powerbar, or no lollipop."  
  
John makes a face. It hadn't been that good of a try, actually, but he's feeling the combined effects of the stasis chamber, wind burn, and going on 14 hours (or 700 years) of no food, so he doesn't feel guilty about the lack of effort. He unwraps the powerbar and takes a bite, its gritty, chemical-y, thoroughly processed taste chasing the dust of millennia from his mouth.  
  
 _For the foreseeable future_ , he thinks, as the infirmary settles into the quiet buzz of skilled technicians running familiar tests. Hearing about it had been bad enough; he doesn't know that he'd want to see it, now, even if it is different. Will be different. Shall have been? God, he hates time travel. He chugs half of the bottle of apple juice. At least he didn't have to live it, first time around. Not like Rodney.  
  
Rodney. Old, wrinkled, surprisingly not-bald Rodney. A Rodney beaten down, pushed to his limits, who gave up everything--Atlantis, Pegasus, a chance at the Nobel, his _life_ \--to fix the timeline, to make it so that all of that suffering had never happened. To prevent all of that death, all of that loss.  
  
Keller comes over to take a reading from the scanner. "Things are looking good so far, Colonel. You've got no obvious infections, and you're definitely not a Replicator or any kind of bug/human hybrid," she says, smiling at him, her eyes creasing prettily at the corners.  
  
"He's in love with you." John says, mostly to himself.  
  
Keller blinks. "Colonel Sheppard? What are you talking about?"  
  
"He's in love with you. In the future. I thought you should know." He frowns, hoping he won't have to deal with any novel verb tenses in this clearly-a-bad-idea conversation.  
  
"Who is? What are you talking about?" Keller asks. Should he think of her as "Jennifer"? That's what Rodney was calling her. Had been. Will have been. Keller touches his arm. "Colonel, are you feeling disoriented? We still don't know as much as I'd like about the effects of the stasis pods on the mind. There may be some short-term memory loss, or confusion, depending on how long a person is in stasis."  
  
John's not confused. "Rodney. He's--he was, back in the future, he was in love with you. Will be. Is going to have been." Damn. Keller's looking concerned; it's probably not the verbs. "It's not stasis effects. He told me, about how you two got together, and then you got sick, and you died, and he spent the next 25 years trying to fix that." _The rest of his life_ , John thinks, _just so long as you both might live_. He thinks the apple juice might have been rancid.  
  
"But Colonel Carter said that it was to stop Michael, that Rodney needed to send you back to before Teyla had her baby, so that Michael couldn't use him to perfect the Hoffan virus." Now Keller's brow is creased, as she tries to make sense of the past few hours, the next few years. It's still pretty.  
  
"Yeah, that, and to keep Teyla from dying, to save Sam, and Ronon, and everyone. But it was when you died that he couldn't stand it any more. He's in love with you."  
  
"You keep saying that. I don't think--"  
  
"No, look!" Why won't she listen? It's painfully obvious. "He told me, when you were going back on the _Daedalus_ \--"  
  
"Going back? From where?" Keller asks.  
  
"Atlantis. You were leaving Atlantis. Both of you. Couldn't deal with the new management, the IOA not letting you help all of the dying people in the galaxy." John looks at his feet; he's never liked giving bad performance evaluations.  
  
"I just quit? Are you sure? I-- I'd like to think better of myself than that, to think that I'd have adjusted better than that, by then. I _have_ adjusted better than that."  
  
John shakes his head. "It's not-- it was a difficult situation. People kept dying, good people, and the IOA was tying your hands, keeping you from doing anything you could to still help people. It must have been . . . demoralizing."  
  
Keller pauses, brow furrowed. John thinks he's glad that she's as bright as she is, that she's learning to puzzle through the madness that Pegasus throws at them. He's always liked intelligent problem-solvers. He can't imagine Rodney loving anyone who wasn't.  
  
"So, you're telling me," Keller says, starting off slowly, "that practically everyone I care about in this galaxy has been killed, and the IOA is preventing me from being any help to the people who are still alive," she starts to pick up speed, "and it's so bad that I'm actually choosing to leave Atlantis, and there's pretty much one other person in two galaxies who could understand how I feel," her voice is louder, now, "who I'm sure feels it even worse than I do, and then we spend three weeks together in close quarters, and we end up hooking up--that's your basis for telling me Rodney's in love with me?" Keller stares at him.  
  
John snaps, "It was more than hooking up! You were happy! Together, the two of you, for a little while on Earth--"  
  
"Before I got sick and died."  
  
"Yeah, before that." John tries to soften his glare. "You were happy together." He's not sure if it works.  
  
Keller sighs. "Colonel, it sounds to me like we were the only thing keeping the other from going completely insane." She fiddles with something on the scanner's control panel. John thinks fleetingly of sterility. "I mean, in that situation," she continues, considering, "with the _only other person_ in the universe who understands-- yeah, I'd fall in love with that person." John wonders when his jaw muscles got so tight. Can you get tetanus from sand?  
  
"Honestly," Keller's still talking, and John wonders why she doesn't get back to work. He's probably an evil mutant clone with infectious sand lockjaw, and she's standing around gossiping. Who started this conversation, anyway? "I don't think it'd really matter who it was, or how I felt about them, you know, before. I mean, I like Rodney, I do, he's saved my life, a couple of times at least, and he'd a good guy. Decent. Funny. Kinda cute." She smiles. John wonders if space tetanus is communicable by sneezing, or if he'd have to bleed, or maybe vomit on someone. "But if it had been Radek, instead? Or Dr. Parrish? Probably the same result." Of course she'd go for a botanist. John frowns. "Or Dr. Simpson? Oh, or Dr. Biro? Yeah, I'm thinking we're talking life partnership, there, and she's not really my type."  
  
"But he seemed happy." John thinks he's missing something.  
  
Keller smiles at John. "I think it was probably more like, 'marginally less despairing'. And I'm pretty sure it was a product of circumstance. He's not in love with me." John's still frowning; he's not entirely sure whether he's relieved or disappointed to hear that. "But hey, if it makes you feel better, I promise: If the universe goes all to hell, and it's a matter of falling in love with McKay or letting us both spiral into depression and suicide, I'll fall in love with McKay."  
  
John snorts. Well, that's just silly. His stomach rumbles, and he wonders if there's any more apple juice. "You promise?"  
  
"Cross my heart, hope not to die. It'll be epic," she grins.  
  
"Well, so long as it's epic." John slouches back, resting on his hands, and returns her grin. He can just picture the cover of the romance novel: a post-apocalyptic setting, maybe a crashed alien spaceship, Jennifer's hair wild in the wind, Rodney standing heroic, straight and tall, like he'd been when he'd walked down the gateroom stairs into John's dream, so very alive. He chuckles, thinking of the potential "bald Fabio" jokes he could make. He wishes Rodney'd been here for the conversation.  
  
Keller starts for her computer, but pauses and turns back. "Colonel?" she asks. John can see her face shift back into 'puzzling' mode. "If you don't mind me saying," John's pretty sure he will, if only on principle, "I think it's very sweet that you're so concerned with Rodney's happiness." Well, she doesn't have to make it sound so girly. "It's just, you might-- you might try not being so noble, all the time."  
  
"What?"  
  
She's looking at him the way his 7th grade Algebra teacher used to: anticipating. He's not used to disappointing that look, but he hadn't even known they were working an equation. "Could you repeat the question?" Next he'll ask her to use it in a sentence--anything to buy time. "Noble?"  
  
Keller shrugs. "Self-sacrificing. Ready to give up your own well-being for the sake of others'."  
  
"You mean, doing my job?"  
  
"No, that's not--" She shakes her head. "Just, try thinking about what would make _you_ happy. And then go for it."  
  
John thinks. "Is this your way of telling me I can go get a sandwich?"  
  
Keller huffs out a laugh. "No, no, I'm not--" she catches one of the technicians nodding vigorously at her from across the lab, giving a thumbs up. "Okay, I guess I am. Your telomeres are apparently exactly as long as they should be, which rules out cloning, too, which means you're almost certainly really you."  
  
"And really me is really hungry."  
  
She swats him in the arm. "Go! Get out of my infirmary, Colonel! Get yourself a sandwich. And--" she breaks off, looking around the relatively busy medical wing. "And just know that we're all really glad you're back," she finishes. "All of us."  
  
"Well, thanks, doc." He gives her one of his rakish hero grins; she rolls her eyes and walks off to her computer, smiling and muttering something about relative density. Snagging a lollipop from the jar by the door, he wonders which protocol that test was for.  
  
As John leaves the infirmary, he taps his radio. "Hey McKay, you there? Yep, I'm done. Certified 100% me-me, just like I promised. Yeah, to the mess. Come get a sandwich, tell me what you found. Oh, don't tell me the medical team scanned me faster than you scanned that crystal. Good, fine, I'll be right there, I just need to grab something to eat. I feel like I've been starving for a couple of centuries. . . ."

**Author's Note:**

> My first proper ficlet, in SGA fandom or anywhere else. I'm not exactly proud that it's a textbook example of the "get the female character to explain why she's not a threat to the slash pairing" trope, but it's certainly a reflection of where my head (and a big chunk of the fandom zeitgeist) was at the time, over (ack) 12 years ago.
> 
> Originally posted here: https://propinquitine.dreamwidth.org/14615.html . (Well, actually, originally posted on LJ and later mirrored to DW; LJ entries subsequently deleted. But close enough.) 
> 
> These days, I'm over on Tumblr [@propinquitine](https://propinquitine.tumblr.com/), mostly reblogging other people's excellent posts.


End file.
